1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to storage device control and, more particularly, to such control based on system operation information.
2. Description of the Related Art
Information processing systems such as computer systems typically include storage devices such as hard drives or other computer readable media. The efficiency and speed of hard drives, for example, often play a significant role in the overall performance of the system. While it is advantageous to the information processing speed of the system for a hard drive to operate at a peak state (e.g., rotating at a maximum speed), such a peak state often wastes energy and increases unnecessary noise. While turning off a hard drive eliminates energy waste and noise generation, the significant ramp times from a sleep state to a maximum speed for reading the hard drive can cause a significant increase in the overall data access time, waste energy for low priority or short drive accesses and cause unnecessary heat and noise generation.
In a typical system, when the performance of processing devices is increased, the storage devices operate at a maximum speed. Actual storage access events can be used to determine if a storage device should be on or off/asleep, but such implementations cannot predict what the system storage access requirements are likely to be, since they have no knowledge of the performance of system processing devices or other system operational characteristics. Accordingly, a means of predicting storage access requirements and a flexible means of advantageously controlling storage devices in view thereof is desirable.